Does USB quality matter when ripping CDs?

During playback a digital to analog conversion takes place. The data is intact but the cable connecting your streamer to the dac is susceptible to emi and rfi that become part of the analog signal carrying digital information. This introduces noise and in addition to that you have jitter that the dac needs to handle and separate data from garbage which impacts sound quality.

You don’t have that same issue when moving data from drive to drive. Just use decent cable and keep the laptop and the drives away from noise/interference makers just to be safe. That’s how I do it. If using a better usb cable gives you a piece of mind, by all means go for it.

When copying a file, error checking is in place and it will keep correcting until the new file is bit-for-bit the same as the old file.  May take a while.

(Streaming you don't have time for this so bits get dropped.).

In your title, you mentioned ripping, which is different than copying and frankly I don't know if it is bitperfect or not.  But you described a file copy operation which should get you bitperfect copies of the files on the disk.

Jerry

carlsbad

... you mentioned ripping, which is different than copying ...

It is?

What's the difference?

Here is detailed explanation of cd ripping, http://www.dbpoweramp.com/spoons-audio-guide-cd-ripping.htm

USB audio connection cares about electrical "cleanliness", is feeding a DAC thats doing D/A conversion. File transfers aren't that sensitive, for most of us speed is what matters so a bog standard USB 3.x cable connection will get a copy done far faster than a USB 2.0 cable.